President Richard Nixon visited China in 1972, and relations between the two countries were normalized in 1979.

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Diplomacy, he added, required risk-taking and secrecy such as when President Richard Nixon engaged China in the 1970s or U.S. back-channel talks were able to end the Cuban missile crisis a decade earlier.

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President Obama's much-anticipated speech at West Point Tuesday night constitutes an opportunity with the potential to be as strategically momentous as Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972.

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Kissinger, 88, first traveled to China on a secret mission ordered by Richard Nixon in 1971 to meet with Beijing officials.

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And on the heritage front, Ford hopes to capitalize on what it says is an actual brand image in China, based in part on TV images of U.S. presidential limousines through the years as well as the Lincoln Continental that former President Richard Nixon brought with him on his historic visit to China in 1972.

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Nixon traveled to the country one year later and China and the US developed diplomatic and economic ties starting in 1979.

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